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Capt Harry Hodgson retained the Greenwood Cup in 1929 after winning it for the third time in succession with the sloop "Faxfleet", Mr J.J Greenwood offered another cup to replace it but as we now know it was to be the last race. No official account of the incident concerning "Saxby" and the running down of the cog boat of "Zenitha" in that last race can be found. Capt Arthur Foster on "Zenitha" entered in his diary "Came second" and underlined it several times. No doubt an indication of his frustration. To add insult to injury one of Capt Fosters crew demanded a wage for the day. Needless to say, he didn't get it.
Above. The steam tug "Frenchman" as she may always have done presides over the sloop race on the Humber in August of 1929. The pennant seen flying from her masthead is on display at the Baysgarth House Museum in Barton and is the original pennant from 1887, the copper cockerel is also on display there as part of the HKSPS collection. The steam tug "Frenchman " was at this time owned by United Towing and while employed on the Humber as a tug in the winter months she was used as a trip boat at Bridlington during the summer. Sloops that are listed and took part in the Barton Watermens Regatta between 1922 and 1929. Alice, Alva S, Betty, Beatrice, Britannia, Burgate, Clarence T, Cranbeck, Dora, Doris, Emily, Eva and Lucy, Ever Ready, Faxfleet, Fred, Harry, Henry, Humber T, Ivanhoe, Ivy, Lilian and May, Lucy, Mavis, Muriel Mystery, Paradise, Peace, Pearl, Providence, Resolute, Salvager, Saxby, Spider T, Swinefleet, Thistle, Verdon, Walcot, Zenitha. The oldest sloop to take part and which came 5th in 1926 in the wooden ship category was "Walcot" Capt G. F. Peck, being built by John Wray at Burton Stather in 1854. The youngest was "Spider T" Capt M. Codd, in the steel ship category built by W. H. Warren at New Holland in 1926. She came close to winning her first race in that year but was unable to catch "Alva S" Capt T. Simpson, and had to settle for 2nd place. The sloop "Walcot" was only mentioned in the 1926 listings, "Spider T" went on to enter all the remaining regattas with mixed fortune. The entries for the races were varied in number, the most entries that are listed was twenty vessels in the 1928 regatta, the least being six in 1924. By the last regatta in 1929 the British Legion had successfully hosted eight events bringing together the bargees of the South bank of the Humber to demonstrate their skills in direct competition on the river using the tools of their trade. Interestingly the general strike of 1926 had little or no effect on the running of the Watermen's Regatta, with thirteen entries suggesting that the camaraderie between the sloopmen and the relationship between them and the merchant men that controlled their employment was solid enough to sustain such social pursuits in that troubled time. The Barton regatta was an event instigated by the men and women of the Barton branch of the British Legion with the aim to bring the community together after WW1 and achieved exactly that. The reason for the halt to the Watermen's Regattas in 1929 remains uncertain; the most likely explanation seems to be the disbanding of the Barton branch of the British Legion at that time. References from; William Foster, The British Legion, HKSPS archive, Humber Shipping by Michael E. Ulyatt & Edward W. Paget –Tomlinson, Hull Times, Lincolnshire Times, Scunthorpe Star. Alan Gardiner. © 2011 www.sloopphyllis.com
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Leeboards Explained. (Probably) The subject of leeboards on a keel or sloop has given rise to all sorts of questions and inquiries as to what they actually do and how we use them. There have been article's written in Slabline in the past but have stopped short of explaining the real purpose of them. I will try to explain without getting technical or using any complicated drawings and formula to confuse you, about just what we use leeboards for and how we use these wonderful things. Having sailed with them for 25 years I have learned to use their properties to great advantage in lots of situations on the Humber and it's tributaries, and sometimes choosing not to use them at all. The use of leeboards on a working sloop or keel in say1890 would in some ways be quite different to the way we use them on Comrade or Amy Howson today. We do not have the experience of handling a loaded barge under sail nor the expertise of driving down tide with a light ship using the anchor or bridled drudge, both of these skills may have involved the use of leeboards in a way we no longer need today. Although the use of leeboards on a loaded vessel would be not be common practice there will have been situations that a board would have been dropped to aid manoeuvring, where today we think nothing of starting the engine if things are getting a bit, shall we say, interesting. Therefore, it wouldn't be true to assume that the following text is relating to those times, although I'm sure that there are similarities. The skills of the pasts Captains may well be understood but they will never be equalled. I am not going to go into the history or speculate who first invented leeboards because that's all been said before, I will touch on the requirements for the shape of them but again, I'm not going to get too technical. For now, let's imagine a leeboard to be a flat, triangular piece of wood, 13ft from point to base and 6ft wide at the bottom, hung by a head chain at the pointed end from the deck and raised or lowered with a tail chain (or chaser) attached to the bottom and leading to a roller aft. Therefore, we have about 5ft of board below the bottom of the ship when the board is lowered. Most people you talk to, including the more experienced sailors amongst them, will tell you that with the leeboard down it stops leeway. No such luck, although the nearer the ship points to the wind the more the leeway will be reduced, nothing will stop leeway on a 70ton flat bottomed barge in a tide-way with wind on her beam, but contrary to popular belief, that's not what we particularly want from them. Because we work with the flow of the tide we are using it to help our progression up or down river and so spend a lot of time going sideways anyway, so we sometimes don't want to stop leeway at all. What we can expect with the use of leeboards on a barge is a very negligible degree of leeway being reduced working to windward, but more importantly an ability to change the barges heading and eventually the direction of travel very easily. It is this ability to make sure that the barge can be turned through the wind to change tack that we need, which in turn will allow a change in the direction we are travelling in. The leeboard relies on forward travel and the constant leeway of the ship that exerts pressure against the board to work, although the sides of the ship have some degree of resistance to being pushed sideways through the water, that resistance is spread along the full length of the hull of the barge fairly evenly because they are basically flat sided from stem to stern. Without them there is no specific point that the ship would be happy to pivot around unlike a yacht would do around its keel. During a stay (tack) the barge would either take far too much sea room to turn or wouldn't complete the turn at all if we didn't have the lee-side board down, with 5ft of it below the bottom of the ship to give it that extra resistance in a specific place along the hull and create a pivot point. Even at relatively slow speed the ship will react favourably to the helm with the use of that pivotal point provided by the leeboard. There are many things written about leeboards and what shape they should be, I think they should be whatever shape you think works best for your ship. The Dutch use three basic design of board with additional variation depending on what work the boat was engaged in and where. The ultimate requirement of the leeboard is to make sure the ship turns into and through the wind when required to do so in order to change tack, to be sure of doing so is worth a mile of leeway! When under way the board is pressed to the side by the leeway of the ship so could be completely flat to the ships side giving relatively low drag against forward motion. Some think barge leeboards should be shaped like a wing, convex on the inside and flat on the outer surface so as forward travel through the water will increase the pressure on the side of the ship to help reduce the dreaded leeway, on small sail boats like the Friesland scow I would agree but with a barge I would think it would require a leeboard of immense proportion to work and would be useless unless doing a considerable speed through the water (not very often). However, we do need something to make the board hold to the side of the ship at low speed, a skating (floating) board is no use and creates drag, which during a stay could prevent a turn through the wind, so a small amount of angle on the board is desirable to help prevent it. This can be obtained by chamfering the plank edges that make up the board to create a slight curve concave to the side of the ship, or have a completely flat board with a tapered chock on the trailing or after edge (when lowered) to create toe-in of the board. Or a mixture of the two. I'm told that early wooden keels and sloops had a chock fastened to the side of the ship for the board to lie onto that facilitated toe-in. The amount of toe-in can be adjusted by the thickness of the chock to suit the characteristics of the ship; the less toe-in you use the less drag you get, the more you use the more the effect the board has against any leeway but creates lots of drag. However, we need to understand the effect they have on the ship to begin to use them to greater advantage and the leeboard has a direct relationship in terms of position they are mounted on the hull's side with the centre of effort of the sails and therefore the handling qualities of the ship. Let's take Amy Howson as an example. If you can imagine the shape of her combined fore sail and main sail having wind blown at it from the side, now draw an imaginary vertical line and locate it so as there is as much sail area forward of it as there is aft. Now do the same horizontally, with the same sail area below the line and above it. Where those lines cross is the centre of effort of the sails (I said I was going to do this simply!). It's the vertical line we're more interested in, because that is the point along the hull at which we need to base the head chain position of our leeboard on, it has to be forward of the line. How much is dependant on other factors such as the hull characteristics, aspect ratio of the sail (don't ask) and dimensions of the board, as far as I know there is no formula to calculate it and is a matter of experience. In many cases sloops, and keels for that matter, were rigged using the sailing gear from one or more donor ships so hull and sail may not have been an ideal match. The shape of any keel or sloop hull differed to the requirements of the owner; the most significant feature that affects the balance and sailing characteristics of a ship is the length of the run aft. This is the part of the bottom of the hull that starts to rise up and taper in towards the rudder post; being anything between 22 and 28 feet on a Sheffield size hull from the start of the run to the rudderpost. Keels generally had a very short run to maximise cargo space but the sloops were given a much longer run to enable them to sail more efficiently, on a 68ft sloop it could be up to 34 feet. The long run allows the ship to more readily come about due to the increased flow of water over the skeg and rudder, generally, the longer the run the better the ship handled. Although the cargo space was reduced by the run, the holds were often made deeper to compensate depending on the owner's instructions to the builder. So for example, if we have a keel that has been converted to a sloop which was the usual thing to do, and the rig taken from a donor sloop, we may not have the mast stepped in just the right place or the sails cut exactly right to suit the hull and make the ship sail efficiently. For example; we know that cutter rigged sloops were reduced to simple fore and aft rigs between 1880 and 1910 loosing their bowsprit, jib and topsail. They will then have suffered from severe weather helm if the main sail area hadn't been reduced, with the leech of the main sail being taken from above the after rail (horse rail) to above the aft head ledge, the sail area therefore being reduced by some 7ft from the after leech. Bringing the centre of effort of the sails forward nearer the leeboard. Another result of loosing the cutter rig was to have the gaff peaked up higher thus producing more sail area and again favourably altering the centre of effort. If incorrect, the centre of effort in relation to the leeboard position and hull characteristics will either produce excessive weather helm, with a severe tendency to turn into wind which results in having to hold the tiller over constantly to try and counter it, or much worse, lee helm, a tendency to push her head round and turn away from the wind being very difficult to turn her back into wind when needed and also requires lots of counter helm. Either condition can result in an unmanageable ship to sail. Although there are ways to alter the balance of a ship by manipulating the sails, lets just for the sake of this article ignore the sails and look at the part the leeboard plays. Weather helm is the easiest to compensate for because we want to keep some of it; we move the leeboard head chain aft to reduce the effect of the problem by using the resistance created by the leeboard to alter the balance of the hull in the water against the centre of effort of the sail. Think of it like a seesaw with a different weight at each end, by moving the pivot point in the middle (our leeboard) nearer the heavy end (centre of effort of the sails) we can still get the thing to balance. In effect the centre of effort of the sail becomes nearer to the boards that are providing resistance to it, therefore reducing the amount of rudder angle required to correct it. Lee helm is where the centre of effort is too far forward, forcing the ships head round (not good). The boards are then moved forward away from the centre of effort to produce a small amount of weather helm. If it's not practical to move the boards any further forward because of other rigging, or indeed the centre of effort further back because of the requirements of the sail, the only thing to do is to extend the area of the board further forward from the centre of effort. This can be done by adding a cutwater to the forward or leading edge of the board to extend the area of the board forward of the centre of effort. You will notice that Comrade has her boards located in a position at the base of the mast; because she has a square sail this is its centre of effort. Although the keel sail can be trimmed, in basic terms there is the same sail area in front of the mast as there is behind it. The cutwater she has takes the front of the leeboard further away from this central position, making the centre of effort further back from the front edge of the board and with the mast being stepped more central along the hull gives the ship a degree of weather helm that is desirable. Cutwaters were not however restricted to use on keels; sloops also similarly used them. I'm not saying that all the pictures you see of leeboards with cutwaters mean the ship has a handling problem, not at all. They were most certainly used to fine-tune a ships rig to handle just a bit better than someone else's, sloop or keel alike. Likewise I have in the past moved the boards on Amy Howson up or down the traveller depending on the weather conditions to change the balance on the helm, forward in light airs and backwards in a strong wind. In the days of trade time was money and speed was essential, every day was a race day, recovering from a missed stay was precious time lost. The cutwater had other advantage's, it adds area to the bottom of the board when it's lowered and creates more sideways resistance in the water making it more effective, the down side is it creates more drag and is heavier to handle. Secondly, with more area at the front of the board it gives the maximum available area under the boat in shallow water when the board may have been partially lifted to stop it dragging over a bank or when being used in a canal to help prevent lateral drift caused by water flow around the ship when being towed as described by John Frank in one of his accounts in an article for the Mariners Mirror in the 50's. Although leeboards could be unshipped and left at lock or staith, if you could do the trip without doing so money was saved. The way we time the use of leeboards is sometimes very crucial, we may have to change tack quickly because we are being set onto a light float or, as more usual, because we are tacking across the deep water channel and are running out of water. As the ship is turned into the wind speed reduces quickly. By the time she is head to wind, the once lee-side board can begin to skate particularly in a swell creating drag, and it is here that we need to reel it in before it can stop the ship from continuing her turn. As we get her head just through the wind and the sail starts to fill from the other side the new lee-side board can be let go allowing the ship to lean on it to complete her turn and continue on the opposite tack. If the skating board isn't hauled in it creates drag on that side of the ship and its possible to end up in "irons" and be stuck head to wind at the mercy of the tide, or be blown back round onto the previous tack with no sea room and little or no way on. Likewise if the new lee-side board is let go too early the ship can stop turning. The timing for operation of leeboards differs slightly from keel to sloop but the reasons for using them and the dangers that can be encountered are the same. Knowing just when to haul and when to drop your boards along with keeping the ship moving are the key features of a successful stay particularly in difficult conditions. A new crew will learn quickly to heed commands from the skipper in such situations and a good crew will need no command at all. A secondary use of the leeboard is that of depth sounder. With 5ft below the ship the board will obviously ground first and kick up or shudder as the water gets shallow and it trails on the sand below the ship, with the shout of "leeboard" the helm will be put over to bring her off the bank and round onto the opposite tack. This must be done smartly as the 5ft warning the board gives you can very quickly reduce to 4 and then 2 and then aground with a broken leeboard as a bonus. An experienced crew will already be waiting for the shout and be ready at their stations ready to go about, but it only takes something to go wrong like a snagged bowline or a jammed sheet to put you on the bank so the skipper has to be on his or her toes when relying on this method of sounding to be able to use all the available water and gain favourable position for the next tack. It's said that this is where the saying "touch and go" comes from, because when you touch, you go. Meaning that it's as near as you want to be, to being in trouble. Alan Gardiner. ©2010.
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